Too many weird looking HDD partitions

May 27, 2018
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Hello everyone,
This is my first time posting for help here. Pardon me if i flout any rules.
My laptop has windows 10 installed , I have recently repartioned the HDD to dual boot windows 8.1 I happened to look at my HDD partitions today . There are a lot of empty partitions marked with an asterisk. Can someone tell me how to delete those ?

ISSUE : I have recently getting 100% disk utilisation causing my system to crawl. I am thinking it has something to do with so many partitions. Is it possible to delete all partitions and only keep the one with windows 10 on? I have made a system image backup using Windows backup just in case . Image below
Thanks for help.
m8Re2d
 
Solution
1. You don't need the license key. Being in the same system, it will just activate itself.

2. If that HP recovery partition still exists, you can use that to create a factory USB. Which is what you're supposed to do anyway. Then delete that partition.
But I wouldn't use that for the reinstall. Just keep it around in case you ever sell the system.

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator


A picture is worth 1,000 words.
Please show us a screencap of your Disk Management window, so that we're all on the same page.
 
May 27, 2018
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Hi i had pasted link for image ****https://ibb.co/m8Re2d**** .
m8Re2d
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May 27, 2018
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Hi . I want single boot win10 and single partition. I am guessing that won't be possible without deleting all partitions and essentially reinstalling windows 10? I am fine with reinstalling . But is there another way where I can just save my win10 partition and delete all these rogue ones? Thanks for your help

Also , I been trying to run chkdsk on win10 drive but it keeps getting stuck at 11% for hours . Is it related? Drive is 1tb . Initial HDD diagnostic show no health issues .
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
In theory, you could "fix it".
But the fastest, best, most secure way....a clean install of Win 10, wiping out whatever is on that drive. All partitions.

Messing with and deleting/merging partitions always brings a level of 'potential fail'. Leaving you with doing a clean install anyway.
And will take far longer.

If you're fine with a reinstall, do that.
Guaranteed to work.

How to do a CLEAN installation of Windows 10
 
May 27, 2018
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Thanks for the reply. i have decided on reinstalling everything from scratch. Have 2 doubts:

1. do i need to extract windows key from present installation or it will be uatomatically recognised?
2. when i boot off usb to install i delete all partitions? what about the recovery partition that came with HP? delete that too? can recovery be installed then later?

TIA
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
1. You don't need the license key. Being in the same system, it will just activate itself.

2. If that HP recovery partition still exists, you can use that to create a factory USB. Which is what you're supposed to do anyway. Then delete that partition.
But I wouldn't use that for the reinstall. Just keep it around in case you ever sell the system.
 
Solution